


Ratatouille? I haven't heard that name in years

by DeceasedRaven



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Because TK is a rat, Gas Station AU, Idiots in Love, M/M, Ratatouille (2007) References, dumbasses to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:25:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21925735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeceasedRaven/pseuds/DeceasedRaven
Summary: If life is a highway, Nolan is the fly stuck on the windshield of a beat-up Dodge Charger going 120 in a 65 before veering off the road and flying off a cliff to its death.Basically, life is rough.Especially when he’s on hour nine of a ten hour shift and “Life is a Highway” is playing for the sixth time in the last hour. There’s nobody in the store and nobody at the pumps, and Nolan is thinking about running to the back to fix the problem, when somebody barrels through Q Mart’s double doors.“I fuckin’ love this song,” says the man - boy? - who starts rummaging through the aisles like some sort of hyperactive raccoon.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 11
Kudos: 229





	Ratatouille? I haven't heard that name in years

**Author's Note:**

> All credit for this prompt goes to a tumblr post I saw by prokopetz. "Out: Coffee Shop AUs In: 24-hour convenience store in a really weird neighbourhood AU".
> 
> Title from a great meme that I can't figure out how to post here.

If life is a highway, Nolan is the fly stuck on the windshield of a beat-up Dodge Charger going 120 in a 65 before veering off the road and flying off a cliff to its death. 

Basically, life is rough.

Especially when he’s on hour nine of a ten hour shift and “Life is a Highway” is playing for the sixth time in the last hour. There’s nobody in the store and nobody at the pumps, and Nolan is thinking about running to the back to fix the problem, when somebody barrels through Q Mart’s double doors. 

“I fuckin’ love this song,” says the man - boy? - who starts rummaging through the aisles like some sort of hyperactive raccoon. 

Nolan drops his head to the counter. At this time of night all he wants is his bed. It’s so easy to picture sliding into cool sheets, laying his head on a soft pillow. Maybe if he thinks about it hard enough, he’ll be magically transported.

Or maybe the guy in aisle three will start singing “Life is a Highway” at the top of his lungs. 

“Life is a highway!” the guy yells, sweeping four king-size Snickers off the shelf. “I wanna ride it all night long.” He hip thrusts right in front of the hot pretzels and quite frankly, Nolan is ready to die. “If you’re going my way” -he spins and points at Nolan, who has no way to control his answering flush- “I wanna drive it all night long.” He winks. Nolan blinks at him, shell-shocked, as he approaches the counter and dumps his stuff in front of the glass.

“Nice night,” he says, raising his eyebrows at Nolan.

Nolan stares at him. “Is it?” he asks.

“Yeah, man. It’s seventy-five out, the moon is glowing, like, really bright, and I’m about to eat my bodyweight in Snickers and corn chips.”

Nolan starts ringing up his items. “So you weigh two pounds?” he asks, and is totally unprepared for how stupid the guy’s laugh is as he cracks up in response. He sounds like a dying old man and Nolan refuses to be charmed. He refuses.

“I was actually a preemie,” the guy says, once he’s recovered. “But I weighed more like five pounds.” 

Nolan ignores the over-sharing. “7.50,” he says. 

The guy smiles at him, really big, the kind of beaming smile that does not accompany a normal gas station transaction. He digs around in his pocket and slaps a ten dollar bill on the counter.

“Keep the change,” he says, before striding off.

By the time Nolan realizes the guy left a Snickers bar behind, he’s already disappeared into the cloudless night. It’s pressed up weirdly against the glass, on end, right beside where Nolan taped a picture of his dog. Nolan blinks at it, then slides a hand through the transaction window to grab the bar, rip open the wrapper, and take a small, delicate bite. It tastes the way the moon looks through Nolan’s blurry, cashier-side window, rich and waxy on his tongue.

A week later, Nolan is questioning his life choices. Why did he think this was a good summer job? He could’ve been a camp counselor or something, or maybe a lifeguard. Hell, even working on his Uncle Tim’s farm digging up beets or whatever the fuck his farm does would’ve been better than this. Instead, he had convinced himself it was perfectly reasonable to want to work night shifts so he could get ice time during the day. And guess who has endless night shifts? The fucking Q Mart. 

The fucking Q Mart has a never-ending stream of terrible customers. Like the rich asshole who had lectured Nolan on why their gas was too expensive while his kids wreaked havoc in the back. Or the elderly woman who brought in her cat. Her CAT. Who had promptly sprung free from the lady’s arms, forcing Nolan to spend a very painful ten minutes digging it out from behind the row of freezers. 

Tonight, it’s the teenage couple having a screaming match in aisle one.

“You promised me!” the girl is yelling. “You promised this night would be about us.”

The guy looks shifty. “Babe,” he mumbles. “Let’s not do this here.” He pulls out his phone.

“Who the FUCK are you texting?”

Nolan is wondering if he’s supposed to do something about the situation, when the door chimes.

It’s the guy from last week. He walks in, stops, surveys the scene, then sidles over to Nolan.

“Rough night, eh?” he says, leaning his forearms on the counter.

He squints his eyes at Nolan, and Nolan wonders if that's the kind of statement that warrants a response. The guy spins around, and yeah, Nolan would leave too if he had any free will in this situation.

But the guy doesn’t leave. He glides over to the couple. Nolan watches with disbelief as he taps the girl on the shoulder. 

“What the fuck do you want?” she asks, taking an aggressive step towards him.

The guy doesn’t back down. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says. “But it’s my little sister’s birthday? And I’m a dumbass and completely forgot, so this was the only place open.” He shrugs his shoulders, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Do you know what I could get her? You’re probably, like, her age, and I’m usually trash at getting gifts.”

The girl’s face immediately softens.

“Aww, you’re so sweet. My older brother has never, not once, gotten me a birthday present. Neither has-” She glances at her boyfriend, but the guy quickly steps between them, a physical barrier to any further escalation.

“You know what,” she continues. “I have the perfect idea.”

Nolan and the boyfriend both watch the guy follow around the girlfriend through the Q Mart, plucking every item she points at off the shelf. 

When they finish, the guy and the girl exchange numbers and she walks out, followed by her sulking boyfriend. 

“Hello? Earth to cashier man?” the guy is saying, which apparently Nolan wasn’t processing because what the fuck just happened.

“Dude,” he says. “You just gave her your number in front of her boyfriend.”

The guy looks surprised, then kind of sheepish. He runs a hand through his greasy hair. “Not like that, man. She was just really nice, ya know? And she was obviously having a rough night, so I said we should be friends.”

“Right,” Nolan says, biting his lip. “So, you gonna buy any of that stuff?”

The guy looks down at his hands, like he forgot he was holding anything.

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” He slides over a bag of popcorn, a mountain of candy, and a Ratatouille DVD that Nolan had no idea they carried. “I don’t actually have a little sister,” he confesses, eyes somewhere to the left of Nolan’s head. “But the girl, well, her name was Leah, Leah said I should do like a movie night gift thing, like get lots of things you would want at a movie night…” he trails off awkwardly. 

“So if you don’t have a sister, who are you buying this for?”

“Oh, you know,” the guy says, his face scrunching up. He pays and accepts a receipt. “Have a good rest of your night.”

Nolan can’t help the way his eyes follow him as he leaves. He waits for the guy to walk out the door, but never sees it happen because another customer barrels into his line of sight, asking if they carry Mountain Dew flavored vape juice. Jesus. 

When his shift is finally over, he goes to grab his bag from the break room before locking up. The Employees Only door has some plastic bag hanging on the doorknob, and Nolan moves to trash it. A Ratatouille DVD comes tumbling out. Nolan looks inside. Popcorn. Candy. 

He carefully places everything in his backpack and calls it a night. 

Nolan’s on the same shift a week later, and he’s not hoping the guy comes back, but he’s not not hoping either. It’s raining outside, pouring, actually, and Nolan is waiting for the ceiling in the corner to start leaking, like it always does. He sighs. He goes to get the bucket they keep for the habitual flooding. Might as well be prepared. He trips over the Cracker Jack display on his way back, because the guy is standing next to the counter, and Nolan definitely didn’t hear him come in.

“Shit. Fuck,” he says, before skidding on a busted bag and landing on his ass. The ground offers him a perfect, close-up view of the guy’s shoes crunching every loose kernel as he makes his way over.

“Cracker Jack?” the guy says, looming over Nolan. “More like flat on your ass.” He busts out the old man wheezing laugh, the left side of his face twitching as he giggles.

“What the fuck,” Nolan says, flopping back on his hands. “What the actual fuck.”

The guy is still giggling when he says, “Bud. If you were me, you’d be laughing this hard too.”

He holds out a hand that Nolan reluctantly accepts. The guy doesn’t move back even when Nolan gets up, and they’re suddenly all up in each other’s space. This close, Nolan can see how soaked the guy is, how his hair is plastered to his skull. Drops of water puddle at his collarbone before sluicing down to dampen the collar of his shirt. 

“My name’s Travis,” the guy says, smirk settling on his face.

“Nolan.”

Travis still isn’t moving, and Nolan feels kind of trapped, by his eyes? Which sounds really fucking stupid, even in his head, so he backs off to go grab a broom. 

Travis takes the dustpan from him when he returns, and Nolan doesn’t really get it until he kneels down and gestures at Nolan to start sweeping. It’s perfectly friendly, but Nolan doesn’t really feel friendly like this, with Travis at his feet. He feels… 

He feels like he should wrap this up, so he takes the dustpan, empties it, and returns to his spot behind the counter. He sits, but a concerning dripping noise makes him remember the bucket, which had probably rolled behind the soda machine. He goes to get it, and he knows Travis is watching him, can feel his eyes on him, as he makes his way through the aisles. 

“Nice night,” Travis says, grinning, and Nolan stops.

“Why’d you…” It’s so stupid that he’s having trouble getting the words out. “Why did you leave me that stuff?” 

Travis’ smile jerks and for a second Nolan thinks he’s going to deny it. But his face evens out, and he steps towards Nolan, hand coming to rest casually on the stupid Cracker Jack rack. 

“Why do you think?” he asks. 

Nolan looks at him, at the lines of his body where they disappear under his basketball shorts and cutoff tank. It’s an objectively ridiculous look, but Nolan can’t stop staring at how large his thighs look swallowed up in the mesh, how his wet shoulders glisten under the harsh, looming fluorescents. 

“You wanna…?” Nolan asks.

“Fuckin’ yeah,” Travis responds, and Nolan kind of, not runs, but almost, to the front door, locks it, flips the sign to closed. He shuts off the lights and heads to the back. He has trouble opening the break room door, mostly because Travis is all of a sudden plastered against his back, mouth wet where it’s trailing down his neck.

“Okay?” Travis asks, breath warm in his ear and Nolan shivers. 

“Yeah.”

They collapse through the door when Nolan gets it unlocked, and he slams it behind them. They’re bathed in flickering shadows from the breakroom’s dangling lightbulb. Nolan watches as the light trapises over Travis’ face and away again, throwing him into darkness. He suddenly doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“You wanna sit?” Travis asks, and Nolan doesn’t really know what’s happening until he’s seated in a black folding chair that Travis pulls out of nowhere. Travis climbs into his lap and they’re kissing, Nolan’s arms stapled to the chair where Travis has got him caged. Nolan’s lip gets caught between Travis’ where he’s gently sucking it in. It pops out with a wet sound that seems deafening in the silence of the room.

Travis pulls back a little. “This feels illegal. Or like, unethical? Are you gonna get fired?”

Nolan stares at him then finds himself caught in Travis’ shoulder, laughing so hard he can’t breathe. Travis starts giggling, a little, like he doesn’t really get it.

“I don’t care,” Nolan says. “I really could not give less of a fuck.”

He grinds up on Travis and they’re kissing again, loud and a little desperate. Travis gets two hands in Nolan’s hair and pulls back his head so he can bite at the place his neck meets his shoulder. Nolan groans and closes his eyes when Travis starts talking. Nolan doesn’t really know what he’s saying, but Travis’ voice on his skin is making him feel hot all over. He runs a hand, experimentally, under the bottom edge of Travis’ shorts. Travis bucks forward, eager, and Nolan slides his hands all the way up, thighs thick and solid in his grasp.

“Fuck,” he says when he feels where Travis is naked beneath his shorts.

Travis smirks at him, like he’s trying to be dirty, but mostly looks a little goofy. Nolan kisses the stupid look off his face, peels down his shorts, and gets a hand on him. 

The angle’s all wrong, but Travis doesn’t seem to care, thrusting into Nolan’s grasp, and making small, bitten-off noises that are going straight to Nolan’s dick. He’s so hard, but he focuses on getting Travis off. He spits all over his hand where it’s still on Travis and spreads the saliva as he jerks him a little faster and a little tighter than before. It’s kind of nasty, which Travis must be into, because he moans and after a couple more thrusts, comes hard enough that he hits the bottom of Nolan’s chin. 

“Fuck. Fuck, sorry,” he says, and licks up over Nolan’s stubble to get him clean. 

He pulls his shorts back on. Nolan slowly unzips his jeans and gets a hand on himself, his eyes on Travis, hovering above him and looking a little dazed.

“No, don’t,” Travis says, hand tight on Nolan’s wrist. Nolan stops. He watches as Travis sinks down to the floor. It’s like before - he feels the furthest from friendly about any of this, he feels mostly like he wants to fuck Travis’ mouth until he comes. He tells Travis this, who groans, eyes darkening.

"Fuckin' do it."

Travis sits back on his feet, braces his hands on his thighs. Nolan feels his breath catch in his throat. He stands up and strips just enough so that his dick, red and leaking at the tip, springs free. He walks up to Travis, pushes a thumb into his mouth. His lips are warm around him and Nolan slowly feeds his dick in beside his finger. He goes slow, watching Travis for cues. His eyes are hungry on his, so he goes all the way in, before pulling out to thrust, hard. Travis makes a gagging noise.

“You want me to stop?” he asks. Travis shakes his head, so Nolan waits a couple seconds for him to relax before starting up again. He goes firm, not too fast, but not slow either and watches as Travis takes him, again and again.

“You look so good like this,” he says, and Travis whines around him. Nolan feels himself getting close. He threads a hand through Travis’ hair and holds him in place. He pushes in and manages to tighten in warning before he spills down Travis’ throat. 

He pulls out and hauls Travis up. Travis slides his tongue into Nolan’s mouth, pushing his own taste between his lips. By the time Travis peels back, Nolan feels boneless, limbs floaty and useless as they try to regain a sense of being.

“That is so not what I thought this would be like,” Travis says, grinning as he folds up the chair and tosses it in the corner. 

Nolan has goosebumps on his arms, and he scratches where they prickle on his skin. “Like in a good way?” he asks. 

Travis punches him in the chest. “Yeah in a good way, dingus.” 

Nolan does up his jeans. They head back into the mart. Technically, Nolan’s shift is over so he goes to close up the register.

When he comes back out, Travis is kind of hovering and Nolan feels a bundle of nerves tighten his stomach. He has no idea how this is supposed to go. 

“So I should get back,” Travis says. He’s kind of shuffling his feet, and at least Nolan isn’t the only one who looks awkward. “I don’t actually have a phone right now and I’m using my mom’s, or I’d give you my number?” He looks off into the night. “But you’re working same time next week, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So I’ll be back.” He looks over his shoulder to smile at Nolan and give a stupid little dorky wave, before heading out into the storm.

It's a week later and the end of his shift, and Nolan feels hugely, colossally stupid. He's such an idiot, it had never even crossed his mind that Travis might not come. But obviously. Obviously. "I don't have a phone right now." "I'm using my mom's." God, Nolan's a dumbass. 

It's surprising because he usually isn't. He usually would never let anything close to feelings interfere with a hookup. Nobody had ever seemed worth the risk before. 

But for some fucked up reason he threw caution to the wind this time and let himself be fully swept away. 

There's a sour taste beneath his tongue. It's kind of funny, from an outside perspective. He really let himself be bought with a fucking Snickers bar. But it's not really funny at all if he thinks about it too hard, so he doesn't, and closes up instead. Two weeks. Two weeks until the end of the summer, until he can fuck off and never come back here again. Two weeks. Fucking Q Mart. 

Nolan doesn't work next Saturday. There’s something about the gas station, at night, moonlight leaking all over the linoleum floor that's fucking him up. So he switches for a Tuesday day shift, because the rink will be closed anyways. 

His shift is over at three. His roommate’s supposed to pick him up, because he had checked the bus schedule and it doesn’t run until four. 

He waits until 3:10 to call his roommate.

"Fuck. Sorry, man, totally blanked on that one. It's just Candice is over, ya know? And when Candice is over-"

Nolan hangs up on him. Fuck. Fuck his life. He kicks the base of a pump, despite his lowkey fear that that's gonna blow the thing up. But honestly, a fiery inferno seems like a great way to go right now. 

He sits on the curb in front of the mart. Jesus, an Uber would cost him more than half of what he made this shift to get home. Guess who's playing candy crush for fifty minutes until the bus comes?

The horrible sound of tires screeching on asphalt makes Nolan look up. Some jackass in an oversized pick-up is swerving into the gas station lot like he's being chased. Nolan resists the urge to cover his ears against the honky-tonk country music playing loud enough to shake the cab. 

The truck pulls up in front of Nolan. The music cuts off. The driver-side door opens and Travis jumps out, then almost trips over Nolan

"Fuck, oh, hey Nolan - are you on break?"

Nolan's mouth is open, he knows it is, but he has no idea what to say.

Travis is hopping from foot to foot, nervous energy crackling off of him. It looks like he really has to pee. "Can I- Can I sit?" he asks. 

Nolan shrugs. Travis sits, but with a cushion of space between them.

"So…" Travis starts.

Nolan cuts him off. "Yeah, what the fuck?" He can feel anger balling up his fists and he tries to breathe.

"I'm sorry," Travis says. There's a waver to his voice, and he's craning his head trying to catch Nolan's eye, but Nolan refuses to look away from the truck. Where did Travis even get it? It's a rust-infested monstrosity. 

"I fucked up. I don't know why I didn't come back. That was my first gas station hook-up, and I didn't know if there was like, an etiquette or something…" 

Nolan gapes at him. "Your first… It was my first time too, you absolute fucking dipshit." He can feel his face burning. "What the fuck do you think I- I work at a gas station, idiot, I don't actively solicit in them."

Travis' face is frozen, his mouth open on a perfect little circle. "Oh," he says.

"Yeah, oh, fuckface." Nolan tucks his hair behind his ears. He rubs his thighs, then sits on them. His hands- His hands don’t seem to be working. "How did you even know I was working today?"

Travis' eyes shift to Nolan before staring at something between his shoes. "The guy who worked last Saturday told me," he mumbles. 

"Carter?" Nolan asks.

"I guess?"

Fucking Carter. That little angel-faced idiot needs to be told not to give random strangers his coworkers’ work schedules.

“You on a break?” Travis asks.

“Oh. No. My roommate ditched me, so I’m waiting for the bus.”

“Let me take you home,” Travis says, his eyebrows twitching. He stands up, brushes off his shorts.

Nolan doesn’t follow him. “No, it’s-” It’s not okay, really. Nolan doesn’t want to wait another forty-five minutes, but he’s not sure he wants to get in Travis’ shitty truck, either.

“Come on, man,” Travis says, voice serious. “I owe you one.”

Nolan frowns at him, then stands. Fuck it. It beats the bus, and if Travis tries to kidnap him or something, Nolan can definitely take him.

The ride home isn’t nearly as awkward as Nolan expects. The music is the worst part of it, honestly.

“This is the third fucking country song about wanting to crawl up America’s ass, what kind of Canadian are you?”

Travis grins at him kind of crooked but fiddles with his phone to change the song. He rolls down their windows, and the breeze feels good against Nolan’s sun-baked skin. 

“Sing along, bud, I know you want to.”

Travis explodes into the lyrics of “Life is a Highway”. Nolan rolls his eyes, but joins him on the chorus.

It’s kind of nice, actually.

They pull up in front of Nolan’s apartment, and Nolan doesn’t want to admit he’s waiting for something to happen, but he is. For Travis to kiss him, to ask if he can come up. Instead, Travis asks for his number.

“Thought you didn’t have a phone,” Nolan says, can’t help himself.

“Oh shit, you probably thought-” Travis says, twisting in his seat to look at Nolan. “I wasn’t lying, I swear.”

Nolan glares at him. “Swear on your mom?”

“Swear on my- Sure, buttercup, I swear on my mom.” 

Nolan gives his phone to Travis, who texts himself. He hands it back. Nolan waits. He wants- But maybe Travis doesn’t, because he just sits there, hands on the wheel.

“Thanks,” Nolan eventually says, and slips out of the truck. 

He gets to the front of his building and keys in, but the long, drawn out sound of someone leaning on a horn makes it so Nolan can’t focus. He turns around and flicks Travis off.

“See you later, babe?” Travis yells, from where he’s hanging out the driver-side window. It sounds like a joke, but there’s a question in it, too. 

“Yeah, okay,” Nolan says. 

He keys in successfully. Travis stays idling on the curb the whole time Nolan is in view. Nolan can still see him looking when the elevator doors close between them.

The first thing Travis texts him is a picture of the Cracker Jack man with the caption “He kind of looks like you”, which, obviously Nolan has to defend himself against, and they don’t stop texting from there. 

It’s about a week later when Nolan checks his phone in the morning, because usually Travis’ last text to him is at, like, three am. 

It’s a picture of his backpack.

U left this in my truck

_And you’re telling me now?_

It was buried!

_Under what? Your piles of garbage?_

Ya :(

_I’m not sure I want it back_

I can drop it off at ur place. U home later today?

_Yeah. Let me know when you’re here._

Nolan doesn’t realize he’s basically invited Travis into his apartment until Travis texts him that he’s outside. Nolan buzzes him in and opens the door when he knocks.

“Hey, sorry I made you come all the way up,” he says. He catches himself leaning against the doorframe, foot kicked out like a nervous high schooler on a first date or something. God.

Travis grins at him, eyes crinkling up. “So you gonna let me in for my trouble?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Travis ducks under his arm and splays out on the couch, like it’s his apartment, not Nolan’s. 

“Nice place,” he says, petting Nolan’s cushions.

“Please stop violating my pillows.”

“These guys?” Travis says, burying his face in them. “They’re so fucking soft, bro.” 

Nolan sits on the far side of the couch. This feels - too real, somehow. The Q Mart had always been a sort of nothing space, where people could exist between what had been and where they wanted to go. Nothing ever made sense, especially in the dead of night. There was always something off, about the space, that allowed improbable things to come together.

He’s not sure Travis and him make sense in real life, in the groundedness of his apartment.

“Who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy,” Travis is crooning, not to his pillows, thank god, but to his dog, who’s crawled into Travis’ lap. 

“Do you even have my backpack?”

Travis looks up from where he’s being slobbered on. “Here ya go,” he says, pulling it off his back and tossing it to Nolan.

Nolan catches it, hears the crinkling from inside. Unzips it and finds all of TK’s gifts from a couple weeks ago. 

“Look what I found," he says, pulling out the Ratatouille DVD.

Nolan is not prepared for how Travis leaps on him, and it’s all he can do to brace himself against the armrest. 

“Oh my god. Oh my god, can we watch it? Pleaaaaaaaase? I’ve been thinking about it since I bought it. Please, Nolan, please?” Travis is bouncing on what has to be a couple vital organs, and Nolan shoves him off.

“I’m gonna need you to take it down like, ten notches. And I don’t even know if we have a DVD player but if you figure out how to play it, I guess we can watch.”

Travis snatches the movie out of his grasp with entirely too much force. Nolan goes to microwave the popcorn. He’s pretty sure the movie is on Netflix, but he’s not gonna tell Travis that. He deserves to suffer for… Past crimes.

When he comes back, the movie is on and Travis is sitting two feet from the TV, legs crossed like a little kid.

“Come here, doofus,” Nolan says. 

Travis hops onto the couch and pulls Nolan into his arms. It’s so easy to curl into him, his body like a space heater everywhere they're pressed together. Nolan shakes the bowl he’s holding. It feels important that the popcorn and candy mix evenly. 

"You really thought, ‘hmm what candy goes with popcorn’ and went with gummy worms?” Nolan asks.

“Taste it, then get back to me. I have flawless taste,” Travis says. “And shut up, I’m watching the movie.”

Travis knows every word, and hums along to the soundtrack, too. He’s mostly muttering along, until the scene where the critic Ego comes into the restaurant and all the characters are scrambling around the kitchen.

“We’re kind of like them, you know,” Travis says.

“Who? Linguini and the hot French girl?”

“No, Linguini and Remy. Cause, you’re kind of like Remy and I could be Linguini, you know?”

Nolan turns to face Travis. “Why do I have to be the rat?” he asks.

“‘The rat?’” Travis asks, voice pitched high. “Put some fucking respect on his name.”

“Okay, fine. Why do you get to be the chef and I have to be Ratatouille?”

He’s fucking with Travis, but Travis doesn’t know that, and he shoves Nolan off of him.

“Ratatouille? RATATOUILLE?” he screams, ears red. “Please tell me you know his name isn’t RATA-FUCKING-TOUILLE. I literally JUST said his real name.” 

“Okay, but you’re the one who insulted me.”

“I didn’t insult you.” Travis looks ready to pull his hair out. “I was complimenting you, because obviously Remy - his name is Remy, not Ratatouille - is the best character in the whole fucking movie.”

“Aw, bud,” Nolan says, cuddling back into Travis. “You’re so sweet. You’re right, you and Linguini have a lot in common. You both have less than zero brain cells.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Travis grumbles into his neck, and Nolan laughs. 

This feels like… It feels like something. Like it could actually be something worth jumping in the deep end for. It's the opening credit song of Ratatouille, really. Nolan's french is trash, but something something "love is like good wine" something something "happiness and regret and destiny". Close enough. 

_ Les rêves des amoureux sont comme le bon vin _

_ Ils donnent de la joie ou bien du chagrin _

_ Je suis heureux à l'idée de ce nouveau destin _

_ Une vie à me cacher, et puis libre enfin _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This is just a disaster and a half in writing, hope you enjoyed. Lyrics at the end from "Le Festin" by Camille. In English:
> 
> The dreams of lovers are like a good wine.  
They give joy, or sometimes sorrow.
> 
> I am happy with the idea of this new destiny.  
A life of hiding, then finally free.


End file.
